Saturday, November 10, 2007

Writing Things

I am not involved in NaNoWriMo, though I know more than a few friends who are undertaking the task of a writing a book in the month of November, and I wish them well.

I AM writing, but I realize I don't talk about the writing much here. There are bloggers who regularly post with updates, and progress and odd, tantalizing questions ("Would the Bridge of Sighs in Venice decay faster or slower in a vacuum?"), but that part of the process is pretty private, and I don't like to share the starts and stops of the entire operation. And the dead ends. Definitely don't like to share the dead ends.

Another part of it is that I'm often writing about things I can't talk about yet. Sometimes it is a secret project, like this thing I'm doing for Guild Wars II. Sometime it is a project that has been announced but the details are still under wraps (like the Mission Packs for Guild Wars, which are coming ... uh ... soon. Real soon). Sometimes it is for a project that hasn't been announced (Like this thing I'm doing for a friend), or something that hasn't been approved or contracted (like this other thing I'm just starting to outline). And even when the project has been approved, contracted (mostly), and is public (like an upcoming adventure for Wolf Baur's Open Design project on the Arabian Nights), I don't like to mention it until after I have it all wrapped up (if then). Call me superstitious, but until the project is finished, turned over, revised, accepted, and paid for, I am still leery about it ever seeing the light of day.

So the only time I really feel comfortable talking about the work is when it is, well, out there. And then the work tends to speak for itself, and doesn't really need me to speak for it. In fact, the work would be just as happy if I shut up and let it do the talking. I gladly promote my work once it shows up, but up to that point, it is all sort of back-room-sausage-making, and filled with more perils and false paths than true.

But at the moment, I can safely say I am working on a lot of Things I can't really talk about. Weird, huh?